No shortcuts to success for the DA or SA

19 November 2019

Respected members of the foreign press

It is an honour to be addressing you today as the DA’s new interim leader.

As you know, our party took a blow in the 2019 national election. Our loss of 1.5 percentage points marked the first regression for the party in what had been uninterrupted and somewhat meteoric growth since the inception of SA’s democracy in 1994 where we won just 1.7% of the national vote.

This loss in support is a setback, but it has taught us an invaluable lesson – and one that our whole country needs to learn. It is this: there are no shortcuts to success.

In its pursuit of further growth, and mindful of the gathering crisis in South Africa that is sinking more and more people into desperate circumstances, the DA turned to quick-fixes, yielding to the temptation to tell people what they wanted to hear and show them what they wanted to see.

But there are no shortcuts in life, really. Political parties everywhere need the same things: philosophical coherence; values-based, decisive leadership; and public representatives who are committed to the cause. And the DA is no exception.

And so, our party is going back to the basics, to do the hard yards of building trust and support through grassroots activism, good governance and an authentic message based on our liberal values.

My mission as interim leader is to unite the party around our founding purpose, which is to promote individual freedom by ensuring every person has not only the right but also the means to live a life they value. Quite simply: poverty is our enemy, prosperity our objective.

In South Africa, 99.9% of those living in poverty are black. And the harsh reality is that both poverty and racial inequality are growing. However, this does not require the DA to forsake its liberal principle of nonracialism, which is what it had begun to do in recent years.

On the contrary, the continued pursuit of race-based policies in SA has contributed to the gathering crisis the country faces today. BEE and affirmative action have acted as a brake on economic growth, a fig-leaf for corruption, and a deterrent to investors. They are exactly the kind of short cut that has failed South Africa, serving only to enrich a relatively small elite at the expense of the masses.

To put it bluntly, the “progressive, transformation” agenda has been downright regressive. It is elitist and anti-poor.

The DA I lead will unashamedly advocate for true nonracialism. By non-racialism, I mean an unequivocal rejection of racial classification and racial preferencing. And importantly, I also mean an unequivocal imperative to right the wrongs of South Africa’s unjust past in which the black majority were excluded and dispossessed on the basis of race.

And so the DA’s redress policies will prioritise those who remain excluded to this day: the over 30 million South Africans trapped in poverty.

But the stark reality is that there are no short cuts in the fight to reduce poverty rather than merely alleviate it. No country is special. As a nation, we have to do the hard yards of fixing SA’s broken education system, delivering better healthcare, ensuring safer neighbourhoods and enabling a successful economy.

Right now, our economy is crippled by short cuts that are trapping us in a high-debt, low-growth situation. Borrowing a billion rand a day to pay for thousands of unproductive public servants and to bail out failing state-owned companies is a crippling short cut. Look no further than crashing SAA to see it’s really a short cut to a dead end.

We need to cut these expenses so that we can free up resources to develop the transport, energy and communications infrastructure that will enable a successful, growing economy. These are the hard yards that the DA is committed to.

We need to train and incentivise our teachers rather than lowering the pass mark. We need to fix our hospitals and clinics and health departments rather than making lofty promises about NHI that cannot be kept. We need to undertake an effective land reform process rather than derail our entire economy with populist talk of expropriation without compensation.

Voters may temporarily be seduced by the appeal of short cuts. But investors are swayed only by the prospect of profit and nor will ratings agencies be fooled. As living standards slowly, inexorably deteriorate, voters too will come to learn the folly of short cuts.

South Africa will only turn the corner with real structural reform that gets us back to doing the hard yards. The good news is that now we have one party emboldened to speak up for the rational, evidence-based answer to South Africa’s problems. And not a minute too soon. The 2021 elections are almost upon our party, while a ratings downgrade is almost upon South Africa. It’s time for action.

Issued by John Steenhuisen, DA Interim Leader, 19 November 2019